Here's a Perl script that will create a recursive tarfile, and name it with the date and time embedded in the filename. I usually place it in /usr/local/bin. Just call it while adjacent to the directory you want to archive, using the directory name as the argument:

tar cvf poop.tar /poop works for me however some of the files in the tar file have not recorded the directory the files have come from.. is there an easy way to fix this? does it have something to do with the size of the archive file? etc etc.....